Talking Back (1989 Douglas Day Stewart & scr)

I wondered when this began "how does a film about a debate team get financed?" but then it is America. Actually film isn't uninteresting, charting relationship of new scholarship students Kirk Cameron and Jaime Gertz with playboy scholar (Tim Quill - rather too pretty and smiley) and inspirational teacher Roy Scheider.

Day had small success in the eighties as a writer of The Blue Lagoon and Officer and a Gentlemen.

Anne Coates' editing is smooth and invisible - as it should be - until inspired moment where she cuts an array of orating students to Chuck Berry's Tutti Frutti.

The eighties music is as awful as you'll remember.

Our from-VHS copy was 4x3 but didn't look particularly cropped.